


still as the water comes

by parareve



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: (presumed) unrequited love, (shhhhh it's fine it has a happy ending), A short storybook of travels, M/M, Sakura Doing Her Thing in a mystery world, a lot of Fai's thoughts, a lot of inner monologues, a very bi Syaoran, a very frustrated Kurogane, and a whole damn lot of prose, featuring:, many headcannon liberties were taken, perhaps too many parenthetical thoughts were added, teenage angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-13 22:31:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13580292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parareve/pseuds/parareve
Summary: He’s beautiful.It’s not a hidden thing—though hetries, burrowed deep inside the folds of midnight black linen as if it were the sky itself seeking to swallow him up, sealed away by crimson thread that knots down his frame (steady,steady), tied by a grip still and sure as the blood-moon eyes that linger so frequently on the crescent grin of this world’s glittering night—but he’sbeautiful, a vicious, haunting sort that leaves Fai with bated breath and a quiver in his bones with every glance he dares.





	still as the water comes

_I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests._  
\- Pablo Neruda

 

-:-

 

He’s beautiful.

It’s not a hidden thing—though he _tries_ , burrowed deep inside the folds of midnight black linen as if it were the sky itself seeking to swallow him up, sealed away by crimson thread that knots down his frame (steady, _steady_ ), tied by a grip still and sure as the blood-moon eyes that linger so frequently on the crescent grin of this world’s glittering night—but he’s _beautiful_ , a vicious, haunting sort that leaves Fai with bated breath and a quiver in his bones with every glance he dares.

He knows, sooner or later, he _knows_ it will catch up to him, for the moments he holds are too few and too close, a frenzied collection of stolen glimpses at the man (the _boy_ , all youthful jealousy and unkempt anger) beneath. (Fai has lived too long and too many to let himself believe it is anything otherwise; to dismiss such an obsession as curiosity or suspicion ( _love_ ) would be a lie, but how long has it been since he let anything other than falsehood slip between his teeth?) 

But it _is_ curiosity that prickles beneath his skin, that sends suspicion curdling deep in his belly, the more he watches, listens—because what would a man so brash, so silver-tongued and demanding, feel the need to hide? (It’s a bit hypocritical, Fai supposes, but his secrets are his own and he has little care for projecting his sentiments onto others; he has fought through blood and fire and every other hell the Old Magiks had written of to still be standing and there is no one like _him_ —but that piece of himself he stows away behind a violet veil stronger than dragonfang and a smile sharp enough to cut glass; above the surface, the façade parades on.)

He has seen warriors with scars deep enough to carve valleys into the maps of their skin, and kings with eyes cut from steel and words sharper still; he has seen the runes of pagan magic draw life from the earth, and, in the same whisper of twisted tongue from the books of the Old World, steal life away; he has seen supernovas of pulse and sweat and soul beneath the swell of a woman’s breast, auras of being, breath, _alive_ surging into electric existence, tasted the salt-wine of a soldier’s blood-speckled lips and the velour heat of a priestess’s neck. He has lived and seen and felt and done—he is _old_ , and he is tired, and he has had his fill.

(Had thought, at least; life of the Court had given him more than enough permissions to get his way, and he had snatched whatever fleeting chances of escape the winged gates of Luval could give him before the fate of his wretched existence came snapping at his heels.)

But the word _shinobi_ sits heavy and foreign on his tongue, cloddishly-voweled and strange to his ears (Mokona hadn’t had a direct translation for it, though he had floundered at his own choice comparisons— _soldier_ and _royal guard_ apparently hadn’t fit, if the unsure coloring of Syaoran’s face was anything to go by). He’s turned the word over and over like a stone worn smooth, trying to piece together what it _should_ mean, yet to find closure in it (or in the man to whom its title belongs).

He wonders, perhaps, if such ambiguity is the point—words are just words, after all, meaningless in their own right, and there is only so much one can do with a freed soul who has lived its life within cages of iron and flesh alike with no intention of returning to them. (He knows a thing or two of that; royal blood in his veins or not, he’s long spat on the holy title bestowed upon him.)

He wonders if such a thing—such namelessness—is what Kurogane seeks, under it all; beneath the heavy weight of hidden armor and the hollows of his bones; beneath hidden scars, hidden stories, hidden words spoken in silence only to the crescent moon.

(Fai has been wondering a lot lately, and he’s starting to think it’s becoming too much of a damn nuisance to keep up with.

But, then again, he wonders about that too.)

 

-:-

 

He wakes to the smell of sweet smoke and a sharp flutter of light across his eyelids.

It’s the noise that rouses him, sending the hairs on his nape rising high with the tug-catch-scrape of a knife on skin. He knows that sound, knows to whom it must belong (the boy is too young to worry over such things), and Fai squints one eye open and then slowly the other. Muted greens and yellows of dew-dropped foliage glint in the early morning light as his gaze wanders—insect’s wings, opalescent and vanishing long before his eyes can chase after them; herbs beaded with indigo pearls swaying forward, back; newborn leaves of evergreen and gold clustered low to damp dark earth cratered around the weight of a wooden stool—and it’s here that it stills, caught on the peppering of dark hair and soil around a bare calf, whose ankle casts a shadow deep into muscle that clenches up, _up_ —

“ _Shit_.”

The gleam of light blinks sharply across Fai’s face again, and his gaze snaps up to the knife that jerks away from a tanned jaw pulled tight.

Kurogane huffs, grumbles, a calloused thumb making quick work of rutting over the nick starting to bead crimson; the knife dives into the small pale of water at his feet, sloshing none too quietly. He’s meticulous with his shaving; grogginess and impatience have shoved morning courtesies outside his concern (Syaoran’s heavy tartans puff into a half-sigh before settling into a rhythm of volleyed breath once more) and blade sweeps back to skin, pressing slow, smooth.

Fai watches. The sight is not unfamiliar, but the silent fascination that blooms in his chest holds him tight, holds him _still_ (it always does) as knuckles ripple and thumb flicks wide to keep the knife’s heel firm between them. It’s blade gleams bright again as it tilts just so, speckled with crystal that drips down, _down_ , across the lines of fingerprint, palm, wrist, following the tendon that draws bowstring-taunt down muscle thick enough to snap chains like twigs and catching into his elbow’s crease. The ghost of a scar twinkles here, sunlight prismed where the water hangs on— _shink-shink-shink_ goes steel over the hollow of cheekbone and jaw, and the droplet shivers, sways, breaks, shattering against the ridge of a bare thigh. 

Fai swallows. The morning is too early (it would be easy, _so_ easy, to turn his head back into his wools and let his mind yearn and linger and fantasize; the temptation sinks foggy and warm in his abdomen, not conscious enough to pull himself fully from his burrow), and it makes the sharp rumble of thunder that cuts through to his core all the more jarring. 

“Oi.” Kurogane’s eyes _sting_ through the dirtied glass in front of him, and Fai starts, lungs clapping shut as dark brows pucker and raven strands fall heavy and thin across a tilted cheek, slicked hair dripping like wet ink. “What’re you staring at?”

( _You you you,_ Fai’s mind chants, and his tongue sits fat and useless against his teeth.)

“Sunrise,” he manages at last, eyes tearing away to fix sternly on the horizon’s cusp—and it is a beautiful thing too, stretching on far beyond the mountains painted with mirth and mist over which its pinkish glow spills. Kurogane _hmph_ ’s; the mirror holds his regard still. 

The knife _shink-shink-shink’s_ again before gliding up in a slow stroke, chin to cheek, with the same unearthly precision those hands have used to maim and kill more times than Fai can count (and if his lashes flicker, disobedient, in their desire to follow the rasp of fingers that fiture over new-smooth skin, he does his best to ignore them).

“ _Komorebi_ ,” Kurogane mutters suddenly; the consonants linger in the air, rolling into a tongue Fai does not know, and he puzzles over them as he turns.

“What?”

“The sunlight.” A tanned wrist flicks in gesture towards the horizon as Kurogane stoops down to rinse off the blade once more. Water gathers between the creases of a scarred palm and splashes quick over his face, flowing in thick rivulets that gleam golden and red-rosed as they wash down a bared neck and patter into the dewdropped earth. Kurogane smears his palm over throat and jaw and lets out a short breath, fogging wide and white into the cool morning mist. “When it filters through the leaves like that, that’s what we call it.”

He takes the wrinkled linen draped over his shoulder to dry off—it’s an aerial thing, the way those hands sometimes move, and Fai’s eyes follow the caress of cloth on skin with a stutter in his blood—before he stands, tall and tinted pink-blue in the pale wash of dawn, the cloth thwipping across his shoulder once more.

“You just gonna lay there all morning?” Kurogane’s steps swish through the damp grass that clusters at his ankles as he makes his way over to where their wools are laid. The tease grits with something akin to pebbles on a mountain path, a gravelly-cold-calm that makes Fai’s stomach do strange things, and he huffs a little in response, his distaste for such chiding coming through (he has never been one to rise with the dawn, much more suited to spending long nights with furs pulled around his back and spellbooks piled high in the lamplight). Kurogane nudges Syaoran’s tartans good-naturedly with his heel. “Oi. Kid, you won’t get anywhere training if you don’t _keep up_ with it—”

“Oh, let him rest.” Fai’s arms reach high; old bones pop and strain as muscles ache into a stretch, eyes scrunching shut and voice stuttering into a soft rasp, “He— _mh—_ had a long night.”

Such words fall on deaf ears as Kurogane rummages through their rucksacks for their odd-coupled collection of pots and pans; metal clatters and clanks, shrill and unabashed in their rupturing of the morning’s peace, flinching both Fai and Syaoran alike from their lethargies.

“More reason for breakfast,” grouses Kurogane, matter-of-fact, as he nudges the boy beneath further out of his sleeping, “Which you _might_ get, if you quit griping and get dressed. C’mon.”

He’s not a man to be argued with, if Fai has noticed anything of him—such tones speak from a life of schedules and regiments, and it is something Fai _knows_ (knows like the back of his hand, though he’d never dare admit it; a life of council for more fields than one speaks to a status he has no desire to expose), but he will not question it, no matter how much his bones protest.

“ _Alright_ , alright,” he sighs, heaving himself upright with eyes trailing the broad back that leaves towards the glen’s clearing, and he can’t resist quipping, “Such a grumpy puppy in the mornings.”

The tease earns him a horrid pandemonium as their cookware crashes by the ash of their night’s fire; Kurogane’s teeth flash, wolfish and crooked, as Syaoran’s tartans groan and huffily kick themselves away, all disheveled hair and slumping shoulders.

“The pork bun, too,” he adds; by now, any case for objections have died off in the warming of the morning’s air, and over his shoulders, horizon beyond, the looming sun twinkles gold.

 

-:-

 

It’s raining in the next world they land in—a cold, sharp sort that stings where it grazes their skin and puts a damp chill thick through the air. It’s lasted days on end, and the mud that clings to their boots and stains the hems of their cloaks has become as much a part of them as the wet earth they’ve been scouring.

Syaoran peers incessantly through the drizzle at the old compass he carries with him. Age shows on its grated bronze casing, sheared and scraped to dirtied gray and its glass lens spider-webbed on several corners (Fai has been waiting for the day that it breaks entirely, but its faded rose faithfully ticks on); the boy clings to it still, a sacred trinket, and through the gloom it leads them.

The clink-clunk of the weapons and supplies knotted on their backs has drilled itself into the forest’s ambience. It’s a noisy thing, through the rain: rubber-stiff leaves _pit-pat-patting_ and birds fluttering in the bottom-branches to keep warm, the mist a drawn-out hush, omnipresent, and their boots trudging through moss and mud and twiggy mush.

“It’s getting dark,” Kurogane murmurs, and his steps slow. “We should stop for the night.”

Syaoran’s brow knits and he looks up quickly before squinting down at his compass through its smogged lens. “It can’t be that much further,” he says, “Mokona felt something this way, it has to be close—”

“And lamplight isn’t going to do much for us, even if it is.” Kurogane’s voice turns stern. “This little one isn’t going to last much longer, either.”

No protest comes from the small creature in question ( _sleepy, sleepy,_ she murmurs, snuggled comfortably within the folds of Kurogane’s hood, and Fai can’t help but smile at the way two sworn enemies had so quickly become thick as thieves), and Syaoran stills enough to glance back at her, mouth twisting.

He’s a stubborn boy—they all are, in their own ways; not the best example for one so young, but the damage is done by now—and true to fault he turns to look at the path they’ve carved with hands clenched.

“But—but we’re _almost there_ , I-I mean we _should_ …”

Kurogane’s gaze is unwavering; slowly, obstinance submits to sense and the boy sighs (how much it stirs a familiarity in Fai, but he has long since grown past that era of his youth), and in begrudging silence he clicks the lid of his compass closed.

They search off the beaten path for somewhere to set camp; it proves a more difficult task than perhaps needed, but the vines that cluster beyond branch and root grow strong with magics that glow emerald when cut—a warning sign, quickly noted, to keep the forests untouched, lest some unknown entity come hunting for their trail—and it’s not until the sky has been painted ebon and star-bright that a fire is crackling before them and their cloaks have been laid out to dry. 

Fai wrings tight a woolen sock, rainwater splattering fast and fat against the tree roots, and tosses it to its twin by the fireside. His nose scrunches—he feels wrinkled and amphibious and _strange_ ; his body is bred for biting wind and mountain cold and snowfall dense enough to destroy land, not _this_ —and he wriggles his toes against the smooth rock that juts beneath them.

Syaoran lays with Mokona huddled against his cheek, brow still tight and jaw still clenched, as he picks at the rim of his compass. Fai wishes there was something he could say. The burden the boy bears is lumbering and ineludible, an intensely internal thing he rarely speaks of yet feels the crippling guilt of constantly (Fai _sees_ this, with painful communion; such connection ties to a task he cannot speak of, either), and it’s in the quiet moments that it shows the most (Syaoran doesn’t lie through his teeth, doesn’t fill that void with words; he _seeks_ to be ignored between those silent breaths, and they do so).

Swallowing, Fai lets his eyes seek out the flames, though his thoughts are not so easily pulled. He often wonders what it must feel like to leave someone so loved, and equally so distant, behind—three worlds they’ve tried to return to her, but the boy’s princess has an elusive magic of her own and they knew the moment her wish was spoken that she would not be found easily (a fair price to pay, when one’s safety is unassured and the threat of travelling with so much _presence_ through the world they had been in had loomed with bloody contingency over them all. Fai trusts the witch enough to know they will, in time, be reunited; the boy’s faith is not so unyielding). 

Syaoran shifts, back turned, and Fai’s gaze fixes sharp on the fireside. He lets out a breath, slowly, willing such thoughts not to venture to areas he knows will only bring him sinking further (not that, not _that_ , not with how close they’ve already become; the boy is safe for now, and the man…

Well. The man is another thing, entirely.)

Kurogane sits on the farer edge of the tree’s veil, the light of the flames not quite reaching him. Sparks float high with another snap-crack of ember, and Fai watches them, the smoke simmering with an ancient life whose story he knows well (the Old Magiks spoke often of beasts reborn from the flames; legends of Ceresian mountain-folk spoke of a child with the blood of ten lives before him). Petrichor smolders in the air around oak and ash, an acidic and earthy balm that makes Fai’s throat itch—it’s not snow, not glacier-air, though familiar all the same—but the snap-crinkle-crack of the fire breaks with a deep inhale.

He follows the sound over the breadth of the tree’s core and finds Kurogane, back flush to the trunk’s knobbly base and forearms tangled across bent knees, eyes shut (that captured breath whooshes out, a whisper beneath the rain), head tilted back. There have been few times, few enough that Fai can tally them off on one hand, that he has seen the other man truly seem at peace; he can sense it now, taste it in his aura (it crackles around him, the colors of chalcanthite; buried magic glows dark in his roots and lingers, tranquil, in his touch. The first sight of him was like watching the roar of a flame sparking to life, and he _burned_ with the musk of black cardamom). The sight is such a rare one that Fai stops breathing entirely, for fear of disrupting it.

There is something eerily serene about the way such an expression sits on a face so commonly carved with the opposite—the looseness of lips and flicker of lashes alike speak of memories being revisited (that, Fai can recognize, if only from the rare handful of his own wandering reveries of his homeland—though he wonders if it could be called such—all far and few between)—but then calloused fingers twitch and bare feet stretch out; a tick starts in a broad jaw, and the moment breaks.

“You’re quiet.” Kurogane’s eyes slip open with the murmur—bloody in the shadows of the firelight, staying forward, those thoughts still being chased as they trickle away—and the corner of his lip twitches. Fai curses himself tenfold; his eyes dart to the foliage dancing beneath the rain’s touch, jaw tensed and mouth curling, impulsive, at a half-smile.

“Just thinking, is all,” he says, and for the life of him can think of nothing other than leaving it at that (too smart, too _knowing_ ; always watching even with eyes shut).

“Huh,” comes the response, and Fai swallows, fixing his gaze about the flames once more. Kurogane rolls out his shoulders with arms crossed. “You’re not used to it, are you?”

Dread pools sickly-cold in Fai’s stomach and he knifes his teeth into his cheek, idle cheer sneaking into his voice, desperate for diversion, “Not used to what, hm?”

“The rain.”

The statement catches him so much off guard that Fai’s mouth falls open entirely; sense rushes back into him quick as it can, jaw snapping closed with a click of teeth.

“I—ah…”

“One summer, it rained like this for a fortnight,” Kurogane continues, and there’s something soft, _sentimental_ , in the rasp of his voice that makes Fai’s chest cotton-stuffed and tight. “The rice fields were overflowing, the lower houses were flooded—everyone _hated_ it.” Fai’s eyes venture back, chastely retracing forgotten steps, towards folded arm and shoulder and eyes turned away (lashes darker than night framing them, hanging low beneath shadowed brows, head tipped back and throat swaying with a slow swallow). “We’d go on walks anyway,” Kurogane murmurs, and it sounds like a secret (hushed, childlike), his eyes sinking lower. “The forests smelled like this.” 

It’s a wandering thought Fai feels he shouldn’t be privy to, something that should be ( _would be_ ) reserved for a silent moment to oneself—he can feel the tension in the other’s spine and jaw draw deeper, and whether out of apprehension for saying such things unprovoked or just something _more_ (something aching, sharp and longing and held _back_ ), Fai doesn’t know—doesn’t _want_ to. Kurogane clears his throat, too loud in the silence, and discomfort twists tight in Fai’s chest.

“Snow,” he starts quietly, turning back to the fire with nervous blood stirring in his veins (he can feel those eyes turn to him, feel the loosening of those shoulders in the air), his words coming muddy and hesitant, “That’s what I’m used to.”

His thoughts turn to a downpour beneath the veil of those words—snow, and blood, and death, and curses; wicked, wicked priests and the queen whose shame they spat their dishonor upon; a boy with his face, bloodied and body torn, and a man—

His breath stutters, and he cannot— _cannot_.

He bites down any other words daring to trespass him, keeps them locked beneath the grind of his teeth, quivering at the corner of his mouth. He can still feel Kurogane’s gaze on him, steady as a bow pulled taunt. It drags his lashes closed with a slow flicker.

He doesn’t say more after that. 

Kurogane’s eyes linger ( _question_ , _beg_ , _prod_ ), shadowed within the dance of the flame’s light, but do not chase for their answers. The silence speaks for itself.

 

-:-

 

Copper clouds thick in the damp air, painting the back of their throats as the weeds and muck twisted into the fray scream beneath their boots. 

(Run, _run_ —) 

Fai claws the air for another gasp of breath, his legs numb with the pounding of his steps.

“There!” yelps Mokona, with a taint of desperation too sharp for one so small (this forest had reeked of old magic from the moment they landed here, and Fai knew that any disturbance caused would find its way back to them tenfold, but they had taken their chances and the feather Syaoran holds is squeezed far too tight despite its fragile glow). The clearing peeks behind black branches, and it is so _close_ , the open air their only chance of escaping—it is too dense, too _strong_ for Mokona to release her magic here, caged beneath the twisting foliage that snap-cracks and scalds jade against Souhi’s edge—and they struggle through the vines, pushing harder—

(Fai can feel it behind them, a wild thing, aura pulsing dark and untamed with the scent of old alchemy burning acrid in its tendrils. They don’t have much time before it’s reach clasps around them all, and the primal fear of beast and prey sinks deep into his bones.) 

Shadows warp beneath the scars their imprints carve into the earth (tingling in dark spasms, the scent of bitter decay rising further) as Kurogane’s arm stretches out, fingers splaying wide with the hollow panting of his breath; his palm clenches hard on the closest branch blocking their path, Souhi gleaming black-blue where it readies itself to sail free—

Laden becomes the air around them (must get out, _must get out_ ) and the blade tears itself away faster than Fai can blink, scorching through the air with a scream of metal; Kurogane doubles down, knee driving deep into the wet earth and scraped palm clapping hard against stone to steer his skull from its impact.

“ _Fuck_ —”

“Kurogane-san!”

Syaoran’s voice quakes, too erratic to speak of anything less than terror, as his own hand flies instinctively to the longsword strapped about his back; such an action proves helpless (because Fai _knows_ what lingers behind, and to speak such things now would only worsen the panic) as his next footing lands him in an entanglement of vines, twisting deathly-tight about his skinny ankle and unworldly in their possession, the fetor of dark magic rising all the stronger.

Mokona sails off his shoulder where his body lurches, her sudden keening meddling into the clamor of Hien being drawn and the scuff of boots driving against stone as Kurogane drags himself to his feet, clinging foliage snapping to dust. Between the frenzy of it all Fai’s stomach plummets to his toes, for there is only one reason that beast is chasing after them, feather stolen or not—magic was lost, and if there’s anything he knows of fae folk it is that magic lost is magic twice reclaimed (taking possession of a memory embodied will not be enough, not with how they are being pursued), and there is only one member of their group whose magics currently shine brighter than the feather’s glow. His eyes fall on the white creature swaddled to the ground, her ears low and mouth trembling, and the sight draws discomfort deep in his bones (he knows some shred of her must _know_ ; she was not bred with naivety).

To lose her is to lose every ounce of reason they have—without her, there is no way they can transport on their own, or douse for these feathers, or have means of protection enough to navigate through country and culture alike (though there _is_ , of course, but selfish fear twists deep in Fai’s gut at the thought)—and dread pools cold and fast and heavy as realization strikes him, hard as an iron-blow: this beast is coming for _her_.

Sword and shield will do nothing to deter a relentless fae, though words can have their advantage with enough time—and time is not what they have, not as Syaoran _thwacks_ at the vines clustering about his feet with anxious breaths and Kurogane claws for Souhi’s hilt through the muck, the beast drawing closer and closer still.

Only one thing can be done now, and with jaw tight and eyes slowly slipping closed, shaky fingers drawing firm into fists, Fai does it.

He _feels_ his power at the surface as his veils fall, electric and effervescent, smoky with the spice of tarragon and cinnamon, a bold, bright, crackling thing; his aura spreads from fingertip to toe and leaves his body to chase farther. Kurogane’s head snaps his way, old magics awakening deep in his blood (though he knows little of them), and behind him further the beast chases, stutters, stills.

Fai clenches his fists tighter, half-moons printed against his palms (breathes in, breathes out, pulse thundering in his chest), before his eyes open ( _burning_ ) and his throat trembles with a slow swallow.

“Get Mokona,” he says quietly, fixed on the point past where the others can see—though Kurogane can _feel_ it now, gaze turning back with eyes unblinking—and his voice sinks into something akin to a growl, urging and sharp (for they could _die_ , they could all be stranded and left without spell or sanctuary to save them, and he would sit back and let it happen out of his own miserable greed), “Get Mokona, and _run_ , and don’t stop running until you’ve made it to the clearing.”

“Mage,” Kurogane warns, low and lingering with a newfound grasp of what such a word meant, now paired to an alien sight Fai had been sure to keep hidden from them all until now and it is only _him_ who can truly sense it (the boy is none the wiser), but Fai’s eyes stay fixed forward, fingers unfurling. 

“ _Go_.”

Magic curls around in his palms in blazing tendrils of violet and amethyst, glittering with energy that crackles and grows, and from afar the beast breathes and _breathes_ like a great dragon feeding their flames; the air warps around him, setting the damp mist to an unnatural rhythm as hair and cloth alike pull in and away, and the magic settled deep into the earth skitters back.

Syaoran does not need to be asked twice, such tones too irregular to raise questions; he pulls Mokona to the folds of his cloak as he stumbles to his feet and bolts. Kurogane, however, is not as quick, eyes still drawn to Fai with back turned and violet aura hanging bright and pulsing and chillingly _strong_ around his thin frame, something like daze and awe lingering in the stillness of his limbs. Hesitant, he waits—he _knows_ he cannot beat this thing, strength burning through his blade’s magics or not, and Fai can feel the acceptance that settles hot and uncomfortable in his gut as he submits; a huff pressed through his teeth, he too turns tail.

The fae draws closer and closer still (a foolish thing, really, but Fai keeps his beacon strong, eyes sharp where they narrow in on the form that comes to light) before it screeches, shrill and unearthly, ashen skin littered with would-be’s of flora and glittering magics that shards over limbs like crystal. _Mine_ , it seethes, _mine, mine, mine_ , voice twisted and high, and Fai’s head tips back as palm flares wide and arm raises out, lip twitching to let bare teeth gleam.

His spell blazes where it soars from his fingertips, diving into the earth and crashing up up _up_ , a sizzling barrier where the fae dares to overstep; it’s claws tear out and its own magic shocks deep through Fai’s aura, tingling dark in his bones. He raises his other palm up, and bracing himself against the wet muck, he _pushes_. The creature rears back with body heaving in quivered rage, and at the moment it sutures itself to the earth to draw deep from waking spells, Fai takes his chance: magic drives hard through the wall of his aura to spear at the fae’s feet, shockwaves burying far below its roots and sending it into a screeching flee, the vines tangled about the winding path quivering with them. He keeps his power fixed there, pulsing erratic in his chest and burning beneath his temples, and runs.

Branches scrape against his cheeks and tear at his clothes, but his steps are quick and sure over the roots that rut beneath him; between the leaves, the clearing grows.

Magic still tingles at his fingertips as he tears free from the forest’s hold, the fogged weight hanging over the atmosphere vanishing and breath coming to his chest fast and shaken. Syaoran stands not far away with Hien unsheathed and eyes wide, looking back to the woods nervously; Fai sucks in another breath as he staggers and stills, palms clapping to his knees, head drooping.

“Mokona,” he starts, after a moment, breath bated and words hollow as his aura slowly crawls back to him (though the burn in his eyes still lingers and the heat in his chest does not yet fade), “Is Mokona alright?”

Something like speech fumbles between Syaoran’s helplessly parting lips, hazel eyes still lingering on the forest’s edge, and Fai’s words come cold and urgent, his gaze clawing the boy’s down to a startling halt.

“Is she _alright_ —?”

“Yes!” Syaoran gasps, Hien tremoring in his palm, and Fai presses himself with slow-hammering heart to his feet, breath still quivering in his lungs.

“Then we need to go.”

The little creature shivers from within Syaoran’s cloak, not quite steady enough to heed the silent warning in those words.

Beside the boy, Kurogane stands still and stiff, hand braced with cautious touch on Souhi’s hilt. His voice comes abrupt, sharp in the stillness (for there are too many questions to be asked, too many answers needed, but now is not the time) as his eyes, too, move back to the wood. “What was that thing? An oni?”

Fai shakes his head, breathing in slowly and then out once more, and Kurogane’s brow draws tight as he presses on, “A spirit, then? A _mushi_ , what—?”

“A fae,” Fai cuts in, voice low, “Beings not to be messed with, which is why we need to _go_ —”

From beyond the glen’s clearing a great keening builds, violent with bloodlust (for not just one belonging was stolen but now _two_ ), and the hackles raise high on the back of Fai’s neck as the weight of the forest’s aura stretches farther into the air, dense, _sensing_ , a warning worse than any magics could have given them of the houndhunt released for their scent.

“We need to leave, _now_!” barks Fai, and Mokona squeaks from atop Syaoran’s shoulder, tiny ears fluffing to alert as the pearl of her earing flickers into light. She releases her spell with a shaky _Right away, right away!_ , bright wings spreading wide and white as the runes of ancient spells cast around them; in the distance the beast roars, but by now Mokona’s magics have encased them in an opalite surge, and the nauseous vertigo of gravity being left has already swept across their limbs.

Within the transmutation’s chaos, Fai closes his aura upon himself, tight as chains, and keeps it bound beneath the tremor of his lashes.

He tries to forget the burn of auburn eyes as the wash of magic blurs between them.

 

-:-

 

Fifteen days and two worlds do little to give distraction (Syaoran’s distrust of the witch grows with every passing hour and his compass ticks with the same brittleness his hope struggles to carry; they all feel that weight, perhaps Kurogane the most, who leads them with resolute silence through each night into the waking morning), and through every moment Fai feels _hunted_ , peered at and prodded like a caged animal left before a poacher. 

_I lost my magic_ , he had said.

_I can’t use my magic_ , he had said.

_I can’t do that kind of magic_ , he had said (and still does).

Any truth to those statements had died the moment they were spoken, but hiding behind them now is more fruitless than ever: they had _seen_ his magic— _he_ had seen his magic, had _felt_ it—and his capability is no longer in question (his limits, though, are another thing).

The boy has had enough cynicism fed to him through the miseries he has chosen to keep behind closed doors that such blatant lying comes with familiarity, a disappointment felt before; he picks up the pieces of his suspicion and moves on, with little care for questioning (he can’t be too judgmental, after all, not when he himself has done the same things for just as long).

The man, however— _shinobi_ , murmurs a voice to Fai, but one that now also speaks shaman and _priest_ —he has not been deterred so easily, and those eyes haunt his steps every chance they can (chasing, _waiting_ , a silent presence on the sidelines that Fai cannot ignore). 

Such looks speak more sentiment than words ever could and yet hang empty, unanswered (he will send himself up in flames before he is forced to give himself over from nothing more than _leering_ ). Yet days turn into evenings and star-speckled nights, and leering shifts to scrutiny and deliberation and reticence; that quiet builds like the roar of a great string plucking and pricking in frenzied crescendos, until finally it _snaps_.

(The avoidance doesn’t phase the hunter—Fai has seen him wade through waters that would threaten collapse on any other’s skin and yet his bones hold strong in every passing step; Kurogane does not break that thread, no—Fai tears it swift and sullen himself.)

“How long are you going to stare at me?”

The warped wood of the inn’s terrace prickles against his bare feet as he steps out into the brisk air, snow sprinkling like fairylight where it floats beyond them. The air has never felt so _still_ and the silence of snowfall is too close, too familiar, reeking of cold and death and stones too tall to climb, and Fai’s nails bite into his palms as he stops behind the other man, bundled and motionless on the terrace’s edge. Frozen shells of snow-domed debris float sluggishly down the river at his feet, and the air clouds thin and white from him.

Fai smiles, idly, as fingers twist to pick at the sides of thumbs, and with everything broiling inside him to _yell_ at this man daring to stalk him down like helpless prey, he keeps his lips shut, breath puffing through his nostrils sharp and silent.

“Until you start talking,” Kurogane murmurs, and his eyes stay fixed on the river’s cusp. He shifts his shoulders, palms braced against cloaked arms and his words ringing in the foggy air, “It’s taken you this long.”

Fai’s eyes clip away, blood boiling ( _if you’re going to threaten me, look at me while you do it_ , he wants to seethe), his smile splintering into fixed shards. “Oh, has it?” he says, flippant, digging into the fold of his thumb, “What do you want to talk about, hm?”

“If you’re gonna keep playing that, forget it,” Kurogane grouses, fingers pressing firm into the meat of his biceps, “I haven’t been sitting out here all night just to be made a fool of.”

Ire clots thick in Fai’s blood as he blinks with offhand fascination at the frosted masts beyond the riverbank; his fingertips fiddle and flick and clench firm into his fists, his smile staying put.

“Alright,” he consents, with perhaps less frivolity than he had hoped, but his care for such images deteriorates with every second that he stands rooted in place. 

Silence fills the space again and it’s a deafening thing, such quiet—down the snow falls without a sound, melting into the blue-black muddle of the river’s flow, speckling onto iced sheets of piling frost. The hushed flicker of the doorway’s torch becomes the only backdrop to them, and Fai stands close enough to let its muted glow paint warmth across the thin layers on his back, his shadow stretching dark and faded to the empty spot beside where Kurogane sits. 

“I’ve never felt magic like that,” the other man starts, with a quiet sort of tone Fai doesn’t expect, “I’ve lived around it my whole life, but I’ve never felt something so…” The words die off into a mutter, lost in translation, and perhaps there is another word he is searching for that he knows would not be understood; the clutter of thoughts wrecking into nothingness sends a furrow curling slow in Fai’s brow. Kurogane huffs, fingers loosening and pressing hard on his arm. “Why don’t you…want that?”

“What do you mean?” Fai grits out; he can’t anticipate the warning shift his tone takes, and yet it burns all the same, bristling on the edges and ready to _bite_.

“That _power_ ,” Kurogane says, boiling thick with something like spite, “You keep that buried within you, you _hide_ that, constantly—why?”

Fai’s smile falls, smudged away like wet ink, as his eyes drop with tightening brow onto the lip of the terrace’s edge and then onto the profile of the other man.

“You’ve denied it every chance you could,” Kurogane continues, “You’ve separated yourself from it as far as possible. But when it came down to it, you knew you’d have to use it. And you did. Probably will have to, again.” He swallows, jaw clenching. “So, why?”

Too many answers build into Fai’s mouth (cursed blood, cursed _magic_ , demon’s touch and plaguefire and a king desperate for bloodshed), and he forces them down with a shuddering breath, eyes fixing back onto the riverbed. 

“You said someone may come after you,” Kurogane says, quieter, and Fai can feel those eyes glance slow and absent over at him. “Is that it?”

His throat feels tight when he stumbles through his words, pressing on the back of his tongue firm enough to make his head swim.

“Part of it,” he mutters.

Kurogane’s gaze hovers somewhere near his cheek, warm as a touch where it lingers. 

“And the rest?”

Fai swallows, lashes flickering. His lips part—once, for _nothing_ ; twice, for _enough_ —and sink, trembling, into a frown. He grits his teeth, tight where his jaw clenches.

“The rest is a long story,” he whispers, half-smiled, and lets the curve of his mouth drop.

Kurogane’s gaze cuts away, breath rustling deep in his chest. 

“Well, this journey isn’t stopping any time soon,” he growls, “So you may as well figure out when you’re gonna tell it.”  

Fai picks and picks at the ridge of his thumb—it slips slick and stinging beneath his nail—and he feels his weight sink deep into his ankles, setting his balance off kilter. He grounds himself in the ridges of the wood paneling and drags in an icy breath, the crease in his brow loosening. 

Venom stings against his tongue and aches behind his teeth (how much he wants to snap back at him, something like _You don’t have the right_ , some measly threat about alcohol affordances and too much arrogance for a body so _young_ ), but he can do nothing but sink deeper beneath the silence that swells, the pressure sliding slow and heavy from his lungs.

(He is _tired_.) 

He turns before any other questions can chase after him, stepping behind the threshold once more, and the door shuts none too quietly behind him.

 

-:-

 

Passing nights give nothing to aid him; he shuts his eyes, pulls his sheets about his neck and presses his knees to his chest, sends prayers to starlit gods and whispered begs against the cusp of his pillows, and yet cardamom surrounds him at every turn. By the third moonrise, Fai can’t breathe.

It shouldn’t _matter_ (it does), none of it should—not the child who’s fate he’s long been tasked to betray, not the man with eyes of fire who insists on laying his soul at his feet, not the lost princess who sees right through him yet smiles for him all the same—yet it does, it all does, and he is _afraid_.

(Afraid of the boy, too unknowing in his destiny; afraid of the missing girl and any pain that may be brought to her; afraid of the _man_.) 

His thoughts circle and circle like a rabid beast until they linger there (and they always do), caught on colors of crystallized blue and the power of a shaman unawakened lingering deep in his veins; on the musk of burnt earth, foggy with woodsmoke, that bathes him in flamelight. Fai has thought of that body, that being and _aura_ , more than he should have ever allowed himself to, and yet even with anxious pulse thrumming in his chest he still finds his thoughts crawling back to eyes warm as embers, and the scent of a body that speaks of forest dew and mountain paths, to a touch as cool as rain.

Kurogane has rarely touched him—the touch of his eyes is one thing, chasing, waiting, _soft_ ; the touch of his skin is another—and yet the memories tingle clear in Fai’s mind. He had always assumed his touch would be hot and clammy and _unwelcome_ , that of a warrior leading his physicality with careless brawn—hands slapping firm against shoulders with roguish clamor and elbows pressing heavy into sides, guiding broad bodies with recklessness and not an ounce of grace, all muscled arrogance and proud of it.

Such things shattered from his hands the moment he had found himself sitting silent before a frosted window in that world of ghosts and snowfall, when he had let the mask vanish, if for a moment, fingers frozen where they had unfurled his necktie (the kiss of cold air against his collarbone and seeping through his linens had felt familiar and startling and made him _ache_ —it was the first world of snow they had landed in, the first callback to the reality he had run from—and his mind fell to ebony tresses and fur robes and _Father_ and _King_ buried beneath the water’s edge); the touch had come unexpected and slow, the press of a palm against the meat of his shoulder and a thumb’s graze over his bones.

Against his body, that touch felt like heated coals—sudden and hot against the chill of his skin, easing into something slow-burning and lukewarm, enough conscious weight to let its presence be known, the promise of power and maim hidden beneath the unexpected warmth of a gentle press ( _You should rest_ , that voice had murmured, soft as thunder and with some ounce of knowing)—and beneath it Fai had felt himself tense into stone, ruins cracked and crumbling and _melting_. 

It had lasted for a moment (not long enough, _never_ long enough), and then that touch had left, carrying the sounds of creaking steps with it.

He lingers on those memories more than he should, tracing their shapes with every passing breath—it puzzles him, how the man labels himself caretaker as much as he is warrior (and still his mind chants _seer, healer, priest_ )—and again and again his heart swells and _breaks_.

(He’s _beautiful_.)

He is too old to let such things wager space in his mind (too old to feel love, lust, _longing_ like this; he has felt it all before—he has _lived_ and _he is tired_ ), yet denial sits abandoned and forgotten in the corner where he cast it moons ago (he may sing falsehoods through every pore, but he is not foolish).

No matter how his chest breaks brittle and cold, how his aura tingles desperate beneath his skin, he will not act upon such things—he resolved himself to his fate long ago (this is the end of it all, _finally_ ; he has waited lifetimes of battles waged and rituals bled for his frivolity to distract himself from his end, from the role foretold to him at the moment of his rebirth; there is no leaving this, not now) and to that fate he has rooted himself, magic of centuries-old budding with fruition at long last.

He was born chained unto these dimensions, and from them those chains will take him (though they do not bind his heart, they never have, and the _possibility_ of a warm touch reaching out to pull him from the confines of his cursed end aches within it, piercing with each look he chances and every stare he _feels_ ).

That possibility is more than a reverie—he has seen the legacies of every fleeting decision from the weaning stages of his youth; this man, though unfamiliar, was never unknown—and he _knows_ it, yet he is too stubborn (too _cowardly_ ) to let such things be nurtured.

So he curls upon himself tighter, buries himself away with knuckles whitened against the thin suede of his furs, and sinks into the world of fantasies once more.

 

-:-

 

Their spell breaks midair, realization of blue and cold and _wet_ coming too quick to be caught—light flashes blinding and sharp through the tails of magics that swirl tight about their plummeting sphere, the transmutation’s pull clinging by a hair’s breadth to the fibers of this world’s reality (it’s only by it’s grace that they are landing close enough to avoid a fatal fall, yet even so they have pierced through the dimensions several stories too high to make their descent a pleasant one, and the glittering surface grows fast beneath them)—and within the span of a breath they are _falling_ , ice wind biting at their skin and tearing the tattered rags of their previous world from their limbs.

Fai can’t think, can’t drive his attention anywhere towards the others enough to care of their startled states; he sucks air into his lungs with one great gasp and rights himself enough to send his feet diving first, and the sight of blackness melts into the cold shock of the ocean’s tide parting in a rippling surge to greet him. Pressure aches in his skull with each meter he plunges, until the weightless tug of his body’s buoyancy settles itself between the heavy flow of the sea; fingers and toes seek out any purchase they can, and with emptiness greeting him and air lodged in his throat and lungs swelling tight with pressured breath, he sends his arms fanning upward and kicks fast as he can. 

It takes the span of nine or ten heartbeats until he breaks the surface (he counts them with every thrust of his limbs, pulse quaking and erratic as the sea guides him higher and higher), and the salt burns in his throat as he splutters and coughs, hands splashing to his flushed skin to smooth the sting from his eyes.

“Fai-san!” Syaoran calls, not much farther off, similarly mottled with watery chokes and hoarse gasps of breath. The sharpness of fear in his voice melts into a disgruntled snuff as Mokona, paddling off in the other direction, makes a rather inappropriate show of _Whee’s!_ and _Diving practice!_ , to which the boy casts a petulant splash her direction, blubbering sourly, “You couldn’t have landed us on the shore?” 

Such nervous anger speaks to a lineage of sand-seas and blistering sun, where learning how to swim has been a fairly new feat of its own, and one not the most welcome in a situation so abrupt. The little white creature only pipes an excuse, something along the lines of, “It’s not Mokona’s fault where the magic circle goes!”, and leaves it at that. Fai would have scolded her a little, had the timing been different; as it was, he chose to float quietly and gather his breath instead, muscles numb with anxious weight.

Kurogane, scarred palm clapping to the water’s surface as he drags himself up from the surf, is the least disgruntled of them all—fairly soured with his own watery grimace, but ruddy eyes steady and focused, reflecting grey-green against the bright tide—and, per usual, makes a point of playing leader, funneling the panicked frustration on getting to shore.

“It’s not that far off,” he says, half-growled amidst the whistle of sea air, and gives Mokona a good-natured squeeze for the three of them once they have all clambered onto the sand and stripped themselves of the heavy outer layers of their travelers’ robes and leather satchels. He promises payment for the boy’s sullied frown and the mage’s similarly steely glare in the form of the nearest liquor-house they can find, for which Mokona begrudgingly agrees to cough up funds as an apology; and so up the winding, wind-worn stone steps he leads them, through the thresholds of the cliffside town that stands brightly decorated against the lush growth of the island’s stony hills, into the first seaspray-speckled inn they find.

Looking like three drowned rats does little to draw attention in a world bred of the sea, something Fai is thankful for more than anything with the nervous energy of toeing past death still drying on his skin; he snatches a table before any of them can protest, promptly ordering for a pint of ale and a plate of good bread. He sits first, clothes squelching horridly and fair hair hanging raggled about his ruddied cheeks, and at the awkward glance the boy sends across the room as he shoulders through the crowd, Fai grumbles out a, “For gods’ sake, just sit _down_.”

The boy drops like a snapped string, and Kurogane follows suit, a hint of bemused smirk carving his skin and raven-wet tresses combed back with a rough drag of fingers. Before long, four pints of foaming ale clatter onto their table with a great golden loaf alongside it; Mokona sneaks her share, hidden discretely beneath the table’s shadow (careful measures always have to be taken, even with frustrations running high), and Syaoran makes a clear effort to keep his soggy boots away from her, lest he accidently knock her squealing halfway across the room.

He is perhaps the least comfortable of their group, and it shows on his face, ruddy with cold and perhaps an embarrassed flush at the raucous state of the inn’s keep. Kurogane is none-too-concerned with their audience and fits quick into the mold of traveler, with no desire to be disturbed, letting the ale settle slow on his tongue (though his mouth scrunches slightly at its bite, hoppy and a little too sweet for his taste); Fai, on the other hand, has no qualms about his familiarity with sorrow-drownings in great pints nearly too large to hold, and he downs half his glass without need for air, finishing with an uncharacteristic _thwunk_ against the tabletop and back slouched in his chair, looking strangely too roguish to fit the image the boy has attached to him (Kurogane’s brows peak slightly at that, mug hovering half-touched at his mouth), and for a moment Syaoran can do nothing but stare.

(He resolves to turn his eyes away, much too puzzled over the strangeness of such interactions between a man usually much more overtly-expressive and another more staunchly reserved, and finds his gaze settling with wild embarrassment on anywhere but the eyes of strangers; they land instead on a couplet of two younger men, huddled and smiling against the other less-crowded corner, hands lacing with something like sheepishness and heat flickering between their meeting eyes. 

The boy ripples like a current and turns, hot-cheeked, to stare intently at the table instead.)

“What’s the matter, Syaoran-kun?”

Fai’s voice comes unexpected through the clamor of the crowd, eyes too blue to seem real flicking behind his skinny frame before blond brows raise high and mouth parts in a small _Oh_.

“N-Nothing,” Syaoran stutters, and his glare turns sour on his plate. Fai shifts his shoulders as he settles more comfortably in his seat, the wet ringlets of his hair curled further now in raggled waves about the bridge of his nose (he swats at them slightly, then puffs up a breath, then shoots a glare to the heavens before palming them back, and the lack of fringe across his cheeks looks naked and _strange_ and Syaoran and Kurogane both fall oddly still at the sight; he thinks of prodding that first, but the boy’s interest hangs in his mind still and he tilts his head, letting his questions remain there).

 “It’s nothing to be shy about,” Fai says, and Syaoran puffs and blubbers like a beached fish, becoming redder by the second. 

“I—wh—I don’t know wh—” 

“You can still find others attractive and have love for someone else,” Fai continues, much too nonchalant for the increasingly confounded state of the poor boy (Kurogane has yet to catch on, eyes still fixed on the golden hair that tumbles messily down the curve of lean neck and shoulder), and Syaoran cements to stone within his scrunched posture (to verbally admit his undying affection for his princess is a task in its own right, let alone admit an interest in any other, let alone more than just women).

 Fai tries to rack his brain for when the naïvety of his youth had similarly been so strong, but finds any such memory lost from him. 

“Syaoran-kun,” he manages at last, brow drawing tight and his words quieting into a muted lull, “There’s nothing wrong with _that_.” And helpless to elaborate further, he nudges his head to the two young men tucked away from prying eyes in a world of their own. Syaoran bolts halfway to his feet, blanched in dismay.

“O-Of course not—!” he nearly yelps, before shrinking to his seat, voice small and awkward and cheeks still burning. “I never, well I, uh—nevermind.” 

Fai smiles, sympathetic.

“You’ve had attractions like that before, then, hm?” he says gently, and the boy claps his hands to his cheeks, mumbling and embarrassed, and at last Kurogane (great blind _buffoon_ he sometimes could be) drags himself out of his daze and realizes the context of the conversation, immediately zipped into further silence.

“Yeah,” Syaoran bumbles, half-whispered, and Fai outright _laughs_.

“So shy!” he blurts, and the boy sours into a ripened cherry yet again.

“A-Am _not_.” 

“Oh,” says Kurogane, somewhere in the midst of it all, finally taking incentive to glance back at their scene of instigation before turning back to the table, brows scrunching slow, “Huh.”

“What makes it so uncomfortable, then?” Fai continues, hand on his cheek and smile lazy and encouraging, and perhaps if the boy was a little older he would have found that familiar coyness entirely too suggestive for its own good; in their respective states, he is nothing more than a child mortified by a teasing parent, and his mouth twists as he flounders for answers.

“I—it’s not _uncomfortable_ ,” he grumbles, “It’s just…well…unless you were of Clow’s royalty, people weren’t… _open_ about that sort of thing.”

The softness of his voice speaks to a context outside of permission, a lifestyle not inherently discouraged but one bred through the social perks of royalty and the privacy of the court (Fai could attest to similar experiences, to be sure; gossip of the common folk was far less damaging to a noble compared to a well-to-do worker’s son), and it stings with something perhaps that it shouldn’t, but the ache is still there, lingering beneath the swell of his lungs (this boy is too young to feel such reservation over something so small, not with so much pressure on him already).

“Well, they’re open about it here,” says Fai softly, “So you should enjoy that experience. No reason to feel ashamed of it.” And with blind search for encouragement, he turns to the older man beside him, voice lilting and straightforward, “Kuro-tan, surely you’ve had similar feelings?”

The warrior stills, mouth frozen. “ _Huh_?”

Fai barely bats a lash. “About men?”

Kurogane roots into place, eyes growing large.

“Uh…” 

“Surely women too? I doubt any fair maiden—or, no, no, I’d be wrong in that, she’d have to be able to cut down twenty men to impress you, a beautiful trait too—they’d certainly fawn all over a warrior such as yourself?”

Kurogane retreats yet again into silence, lips sealing closed.

“Ah. Only men, then?” Fai continues, with brows perked and smile growing on his face (who could have guessed the man was as much strength and brawn as he was _shy_ ). “Why, there’s nothing wrong with that either. Men are beautiful! Women are beautiful. Although— _well_ , there is something to be said of woodland folk, too, there is something wise and ancient and wonderful about them too—and Warlocks of the North, _breathtaking_ people, my gods, I don’t know how to describe them, simply _wild_ —and the Mountain-Dwellers of the South, so keen and witty, I could spend hours talking to them over cleköig stew—” 

“Fai-san,” Syaoran starts, voice very small, “Have you, ah…have you…been with a man?”

Fai’s brows climb high into the bare creases of his temple and his words tumble to a halt, faced with the strange and unnerving fact that this boy (this _child_ , of whom he has been tasked to hunt, to control, to fight down when the time comes—but that time is not _now_ ) would ask so much of him through so little. He smiles slightly, fingers curled against his jaw.

“In what way?” he says softly, and the boy flusters, abruptly speechless again. With only slight pause, Fai tilts his head, lets his gaze drop, mulling over words against his tongue. They come quiet and slow and without a trace of teasing. “I have. I’ve been with a man romantically. I’ve been with a man intimately.” His eyes flick back up. “Why?”

“Well, uh…” Syaoran stares down at the table, reflection blurry and muddled in the settling bubbles of his untouched ale. “Was it nice…?”

Something in Fai’s heart tears a little, and the smile that grows on his face becomes brittle and warm.

“Some of them, I loved very much. Some of them, I didn’t.” He looks across the crowded bar, eyes wandering along clusters of couples and companions. “Love is a fickle thing. It can be far more than nice. And it can hurt worse than anything alive.” He smiles a little, then. “And sometimes you don’t need love for something to be nice. But you would have to explore those things yourself.”

Syaoran sits, quiet with his own thoughts, nodding after a moment and slowly picking up his ale; Kurogane, on the other hand, stays unnaturally still, something like a flush lingering in his cheeks and eyes downcast. The silence from the boy can be expected, at this point; the silence from the man speaks to things Fai should not speculate over (too much love, too much heartbreak, too much pining for something unrequited).

They are questions he does not want answered, a connection he does not want to draw between them—and yet, for the first time, Fai wonders if he is not the only one in their group to have drawn a line, now crossed, of affection.

(He does not want to know. He _cannot_ know.

Yet with pint pulled to his mouth again, his heart bleeds, yearns, _aches_.)

 

-:-

 

A storm comes violent in the passing hours ( _inside_ , warn the locals, with too many stories of boats and souls alike lost to the wet howl of the wind), and so father up the cobbled steps they climb, finding the rattling hinges of an available inn and seeking shelter within the warm glow of its ancient eaves.

Beer and bread and far too many thoughts sit heavy in Fai’s stomach, mind still racing to the image of ruddy eyes fixed upon the bare line of his neck, warm as a flame, and then to cheeks red and eyes downcast, words unspoken and hanging desperate at the edge of a mouth sewn shut.

(He _knows_. But he would dare not ask— _cannot_ ask—and so he, too, becomes a maelstrom of questions caged, frustration growing firm within him with every stride.

But still the storm builds, and Syaoran retreats to his room, exhausted from the day and lost in his own thoughts; and with a tanned palm settling lightly on the cusp of Fai shoulder to help tug the soaked cloak from his back, the words spill out, shattering like spilt jewels—too precious and too _hidden_ , brittle and scorching things locked away beneath his beating veins until bursting free).

The rain is a wild thing and over it his voice can barely be heard, whistling between the harsh shriek of the inn’s door clapping shut as he steps outside, cloak ripped free from the tanned hands that had moved to lift it from him.

“Why do you _insist_ on doing so much for me?” Bitterness coils on his tongue with every word that knifes from his lips, and Fai tightens his fists, golden hair curled into wet ringlets above his knitted brow, cornered and bristling and entirely too vulnerable. “I can manage myself just fine. I can handle an innkeep on my own, I can handle my _cloak_ on my own, I can handle any robber who would dare to lay a hand on me, I’m _fine_.”

(The words sting with lies buried beneath the gauze of such truths, and Fai cannot bare to hear any answer, not now, not with his fate paved beneath his feet; but the warrior is a stubborn man, he knows it, eyes flashing and lips parting and palms clenching tight.)

Kurogane’s chest swells, a great heaving breath that whooshes out between his teeth (because there is too much to be said, the lamplight not bright enough and the drizzle a deafening, drowning hush, and Fai feels lost in the downpour of it).

“Because I—”

Those words rasp into silence with the clench of muscle that rises tight over a firm jaw (they are words not to be spoken here, not like _this_ ), rainwater speckling across glistening cheeks from lashes brushed into ravens-quills, the wet hairs crinkling above them sending furrows deep into his brow. Kurogane pulls in another breath, quivering in his chest (those hands clench and unfurl and clench again, knuckles whitened and tense), and bloody eyes flicker away, then down, then beyond the street’s blackened horizon, dusk-pink lips tightening into a tremor.

“You _what_?” Fai seethes, with heart hammering hard enough to shatter beneath his bones. Kuroganes eyes snap back to his, quick as dragonflame, brow twisting and words too heavy on his tongue swarming between his parting lips; the only thing Fai can do is hold still, helpless to keep the silence from breaking, fingertips trembling against his palms as the air grows tight between them (too many confessions hidden away beneath scars both bared and unseen, aching to be spoken, to be _free_ —)

“I love you.”

It tumbles through the rain, puddled between a half-formed breath that croaks out too small for a body so broad, and Fai feels the tension fall from his face with every drop that splatters to his skin, eyes growing wide and warm.

“I _love_ you,” Kurogane grits out again, and this time those words bleed through the space between them, steady and pulsing and yet still clinging to graveled desperation, “That’s why.”

Fai’s eyes stay trapped, unmoving, on the ruddy gaze that settles on them; slowly, they follow the line of one golden-hued droplet as it crests the bridge of the nose between them, down the crease of mouth and cheek, pooling in the corner of dark lips, until they tear away, blinking away the sting that sends heat prickling behind them and growing on his cheeks. (He has seen confessions like this before— _love_ itself is not new to him, and this he knows—and yet none of it hides the way his stomach flutters, his vision spins, his mouth numbs into cotton; he is hopeful and he is _scared_ and the only thing he can do is _run_ ). 

“And that changes anything?” Fai stutters, blood rushing hot in his veins; he fixes his gaze firm about the puddled cobblestones, words coming watery and torrential, one after another in a rippling surge, “You—we _can’t_. We were sent here for our own reasons. You _know_ that. That boy—that _boy_ is the only reason we’re here, and we shouldn’t— _can’t_ —mean anything—”

“Why not?” Kurogane takes a step closer, dark brows creased and voice growling into a dangerous thunder. 

“That was never our _fate_ ,” Fai barks, and with fist tightening, his clenched palm pounds hard against the meat of Kurogane’s breast, twisting against the soaked linen that presses hot against it with the second step he takes, “We help them, and that’s _it_. The witch made that clear—”

“Then fuck the witch,” Kurogane spits, pushing a third step closer, and Fai blinks with eyes prickling and wet at the head that bows closer to meet him, “Fuck fate, fuck _hitsuzen_ , fuck _all of it_ —I may have made the decision to start that path at the beginning of all this, but I can choose to walk it whichever way I damn well please. And so can you,” he adds, with voice sinking into a husked rasp, one scarred palm raising to follow the wet line of white linen over Fai’s neck to the curve of his jaw.  He presses the pad of his thumb soft against the dimple in Fai’s chin, gliding over the curve of it to find the soft swell of his lower lip.

“So don’t come crying to me about fucking fate,” growls Kurogane, just below a breath, and between the pound of his pulse in his ears and the rush of the drizzle overhead Fai can feel himself melting into the heat of those words, head tipping back against the mossy cobbles that press cool against his back, lashes falling low. He swallows, heat buzzing dizzyingly in his abdomen, as Kurogane’s eyes sweep from the bow of his open mouth to pierce his own gaze once more, “ _Fate_ gave you to me. And I’m not gonna throw that away,” he breathes, “Not now—not ever.”

Fai stands, speech torn from him, in a wave of vertigo, nauseous with the weight of his world spun onto its head; he swallows again, throat bobbing hard beneath his skin and eyes captured by red, red, _red_ —his breath rattles in his chest, feeble, a tremor chasing from ankle to spine and coming to rest in the fingertips that curl shakily against the soaked linen that molds to the steady pulse beneath, cold with rainwater and burning with _life_ , with being and breath and an aura dark and vibrant as the dyed cloth dripping ink-blue against the sheen of the lamplight and the glittering crystals that hang from his cloak’s ties. Fai breathes in once, twice, wet lashes blinking rapid as heat surges beneath his skin (he wants to cry, he wants to scream, he wants to fight this man away with every ounce of his being—and with the same aching bleed of his heart he wants to drag this man deeper down against the alcove and never leave); with heart thundering at an untamable rhythm beneath his chest, he drives his fingers over wrinkled shoulders and wet neck and settles for the latter, heat crackling up his spine where a scarred palm dives down to press into the arch of his lower back.

Their lips crash, a sloppy thing, the ends of their noses bumping and the slick tresses of their hair smeared against their temples where their skin turns to let mouths meet, raindrops webbed between the breathless puffs of air that fan between them; Fai sends his fingers wandering higher into ink-black hair, curling wetly about the clench of his knuckles, mouth moving desperate against the heavy press of dusk lips and shoulders scuffing against the cobbled wall as Kurogane steps closer.

They part, once—too short for a proper breath, the thumb pressed to the line of his chin spreading to cup his jaw and tug him closer—then again, teeth catching on lips and the cold speckle of rain dripping between them, lashes flickering open dazed and slow. Fai cannot find space enough to let himself think; Kurogane’s eyes are _wild_ , black-smoked and flush lingering on his skin, his aura spiced with a building heat of arousal that flickers and burns.

The man—priest, warrior, _lover_ —drags in a breath between flushed lips, close enough to let the tip of his nose press wetly over his own. Fai’s fingertips fall down the line of tendon and bone, breath coming ragged and soft against the press of that parted mouth, touch dripping into the crease of collarbone and throat, and here Kurogane’s chest shivers and grows rigid, head pulling back.

“I need to know,” he huffs, breathless and low with a tenor that sends Fai’s pulse dropping far below his breast, “if that _means_ anything.”

Means anything, a _nything_ —Fai aches for it to mean _more_ , for it to mean _everything_ , brittle heart swelling in his chest and skin quivering with the ache to be felt, to be touched, to be held (he wants nothing more to build a world of their own, to run deep into the forests of memory and carve a home of touch and promise and belonging, to escape together and remain as themselves, with nothing left to chase them; he knows _that_ is the fantasy, the ideal future that may never be, but it is the thing that clings to him now, biting ferociously at the edges of his being). 

“What do you want it to mean?” he murmurs quietly, and says nothing more.

Kurogane’s eyes bore deep into his own, jaw flexing where his teeth clench.

“I want it to mean things have _changed_ ,” he says, after a pause, drawn back enough now that Fai can see all of him, soaked and tainted gold in the lamplight, laid bare at his feet. “And if not—if you wanna go back to the way things are, then…then fine.” Those dark eyes cast down, the palm pressed soft to the curve of Fai’s spine slipping down to flutter, hesitant, across the heavy folds of his dress shirt, coming to land light on his hip. “If that’s what you want, then—”

“And what if it’s not?” Fai cuts in. Slowly, his fingers twist over the points of Kurogane’s collar, words coming muddy and soft, “What if I—what if I want things to change?” 

Kurogane’s thumb curls over the creases that carve white cloth, his brows twitching. 

“Okay,” he mutters, “Then how? Do you—” A flush colors the peaks of gold-speckled cheeks, and the words flounder into a stutter, breath huffing through his nostrils and eyes fixed upon the fiddle of his fingers on the tucked lines of Fai’s shirt. “Do you want _this_ , or do you want _me_?” he manages at last, sternly, ruddy eyes raising back to shadowed blue, and the distinction between something quick and something _more_ —between touch and lust, hidden behind closed doors, and intimacy deeper, something proclaimed, committed, _sure_ —rings firm through the whisper of the rain. Fai can read through the lines that those words draw, clear as the crystal that scatters between them—months of late-night affairs and nothing more is not something the other man would say no to, but it’s not what he _wants_ ; his eyes betray him in that, bloody and warm with a rawness only youth and hidden tenderness can expose, speaking to a handful of past lovers all carefully chosen and unwillingly released, a promise of commitment that would last long after the heat of their affairs had cooled—and it draws him silent, shivering and still.

(This man could be everything he’s ever wanted and more; this man could be nothing new from his past lovers, all sweet care and sharp wit and reckless courage strong enough to send empires up in smoke. He could carry every promise of fire and spite with him and still have time to let the nights by ruled by tenderness; he could be ferocious, untamable, putting himself in harm’s way just for the sake of it and ending his life far too early for something as simple as love. He could grow old, weary, with Fai still young at his side, and ask him to be there nonetheless. He could walk away into the night and never return.) 

And still yet, Fai’s heart _yearns_ —he has seen this man grow from lost youth to found father, from oath-breaker to ally, with soul flourishing and heart achingly laid bare—and there are no titles that can be cast upon him now, nothing of status, role, strength; the only thing he can see is desperation: a nervous, wildly pulsing thing, the buried cry of a lover sealed behind built walls with too much respect to come begging for something he presumes he cannot have. And in that moment, Fai sees the burdened strength that quivers in Kurogane’s bones—not that of brawn, but of _fragility_ , an acknowledgement of weakness that has stripped him defenseless at his feet—and it is that strength coming from a man with such virtue that sends water gathering fast at Fai’s eyes.

It swells inside him like a maelstrom, thoughts crashing into a pandemonium and breath seized in his chest with the clap of his teeth; with fist twisting tight, he pulls back his arm, quick as spritefire, and sends it crashing hard to the meat of Kurogane’s sternum.

“ _Idiot_ ,” snaps Fai, cheeks flushed and wet, and Kurogane recoils with eyes wide. 

“What—?”

“What do you think I am, some philanderer?”

Kurogane’s cheeks burn crimson beneath the flicker of the lamplight, eyes cutting away. Something akin to sufferance glitters in their ruddiness and, mouth falling open, Fai can do nothing but blink his eyes quick to try to find grounding in the preposterousness of it all.

“Gods above, you _do_ —”

“I do _not_ ,” squawks Kurogane, quite befuddledly, and retreats father; Fai follows each shuffling step with eyes sharpening. 

“I—I have had _relationships_ ,” he gasps, at last, “Of course I have—several, sure—but— _but_ —I wouldn’t _ask_ that of you. Not like this, not when that’s not what you want—”

“I don’t care about that, I care about what _you_ want,” Kurogane barks, and his palm raises to clamp firm about the wet linen over Fai’s willowy shoulder, brow clenching tight. “If you want me in your bed, if you want me by your side, if you want me for one night or every—I don’t _care_. I want _it_.”

Those words ring in a thunderous echo off the pitter-pat of the drizzle, and Fai stares silent into the firm heat that puffs up from heaving breast and gleams in bloody-brown.

“I would swear myself to you twice-over,” he continues, soft and low and burning with heat that sends Fai’s chest coiling tight and trembling, “I’ve seen what you can do, I’ve seen what you _are_ , I’ve seen through it all.  And still, I would follow you wherever you’ll lead me.” Kurogane’s fingers loosen about white linen, finding the bone of shoulder and collar and laying there, heavy and warm. “I’ve already decided what you mean to me.”

Beneath the hush of the rain, Fai can do nothing but stand silent, bones quaking and weak, fingertips numb where they lay over the dip of sternum and lung and heart. Warmth pricks sharp against his eyes and one line of heat falls, unhindered, across the curve of his cheek, muddled into the sprinkle where his lashes flicker.

“Then know you mean more to me than words could ever speak,” he says, hoarse and wet with throat tight, “My decision of you was made long before I started denying it.” 

The confession need not be spoken further—the tremor of his lip and the tight clench of his jaw speaks for itself, and with tension pulled free from the wrinkles in Kurogane’s brow, a scarred palm moves from shoulder to neck and tugs, Fai’s fingers splaying away with eager plea to let skin beg touch and bodies embrace. Heat clashes between them, chests pressing together and heads dipping as lips seek out cheek and jaw and mouth. It’s a slow thing, this time, not muddied by the ferociousness of opportunity long lost, but building steady with warmth, with need, with _promise_. Fai smiles a little, despite the difficulty of it, as their noses bump and foreheads touch, mouths parting into a ghost of a caress.

Within the storm they are still yet, but the rain is no longer an unfamiliar thing. Fai has grown used to it. He welcomes that silence like an old friend, guided away from the alcove’s cobbled walls by hands that smooth surely about the curve of his waist—

(They ask _please_ and they ask _now_ and they press warm with want, with vowing, with _Mine_ and _Yours_.

Between the silent breaths, Fai’s fingertips play seek-and-find, draw them closer, and say _Yes_.)

**Author's Note:**

> Inspirations for this were drawn from listening to a lot of European folk & gypsy music (major influences for the tone of Fai's narration, especially [this piece](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuFiBjNTB9o)), as well as the poetic style of [cloverfield's](http://archiveofourown.org/users/cloverfield/pseuds/cloverfield) work (reading [Under Lock and Stone](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7721641) dragged me out of huge gap from creative writing and I just loved the grittiness of it, so bless u!).
> 
> I really connected to the characterization I built through this fic and made an [extra piece](http://parareve.tumblr.com/post/168583649718/character-dump-fai-tsubasa-reservoir-chronicle) just because.
> 
> If you made it through all of this, thank you! It meant a lot for me to get writing again and it has been incredibly long since I've ever written anything this nonlinear, in terms of both narration and plot, and I could not be happier with how it turned out.


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